Essentials Of Music Theory

Some of the music theory essentials you need to master are things like chords, intervals, basic notation, transposition and accidentals. These are fundamental building blocks that all music is built on.

When you understand intervals, or distances between notes, chords and transposition make a lot more sense. The sequence of chords can be used across many different songs, with only the melody changing. In fact, a lot of very popular songs use the same four chord sequence.

Intervals are the distance between two notes on a music staff. You can use accidentals to increase by half steps. Your choice of accidentals will depend on what key the music is written in. For example, if your music was in G Major, you would try to do sharps rather than flats.

Sometimes composers go a little overboard in the way they write the music score. Many have a good reason for doing it in that particular way, but sometimes it's simply a matter of convenience. Some of the masters you want to pay attention to how they write are Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. Strauss is also good. Once you're ready for it, you can progress to the ragtime masters, but they are far too complex for beginners trying to get ideas.

Practice your theory regularly, practice reading music and understand what the composer is trying to do or communicate through the music. Study using the best music theory books and increase your understanding over time. Mastering music theory will help your playing and vice versa.